Community of the Wrongly Accused

Monday, November 14, 2016

The Clinton campaign was so overconfident they would win the election, they planned to launch fireworks over the Hudson River on election night. When they cancelled the fireworks the weekend before the election, a lot of people suspected their internal polling showed they were in trouble.

Then, after the election, the media naturally looked for incidents of Trump supporters beating up minorities despite the absence of any evidence such misconduct was remotely likely. The media ran with hoaxes because that's all they had--hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good radical left narrative?

Then, when the markets plunged in the hours after the election, leftist economist Paul Krugman--a Nobel Prize winner, mind you--wrote that "a terrible thing"--Trump's election--"has just happened” and added something that might haunt him the rest of his life: "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” The markets recovered in a few hours, then went soaring. So much for the Nobel Prize.

A good friend reported that last Wednesday, pre-schoolers at a major university child care center were crying in fear over the outcome of the election--my friend said their parents were guilty of child abuse, terrorizing their own children with tales of the great orange boogeyman.

In days gone by, the newly elected president was afforded a "honeymoon period" to put his agenda in place before being subjected to severe criticism. President Obama's honeymoon period arguably never ended, but for all other presidents, this usually lasts several months. President-elect Trump's "honeymoon period" lasted several minutes after his election--it ended months before he even took office. Angry young leftists across America--especially on college campuses--took the streets, blocked roads, and even rioted. They weren't protesting Trump as much as our democratic system itself--they just don't like the outcome of this election and do not respect the will of the electorate.

Virtually none of the young protesters have any understanding of the issues in this election beyond the talking points of far left media outlets that trade in blatant bias, grotesque exaggeration, and outright lies. And, yes, that includes mainstream television networks and major U.S. dailies--Wikileaks proved what we've long suspected--some of the biggest names in news were in cahoots with the Democratic National Committee to defeat Trump. The delicate snowflakes on campus are happy to parrot the mantras of their moral superiors on the left and reduce Donald Trump and his supporters to vile caricature.

Trump doesn't want to curtail immigration but he wants to stop illegal immigration--so he must hate Mexicans, blacks, and the LGBTQ community. His supporters, too. Trump made comments about women 17 years ago--so he and his supporters must be misogynists who are not just "deplorables" but irredeemable--unlike, say, convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jama and former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, who get plenty of respect on the left. Trump borrowed a line from a Clinton supporter that Obama wasn't born in America and ran with it? He and his supporters must hate blacks because . . . Obama is black. (Trump also claimed that conservative Sen. Ted Cruz was not eligible to run for President because he was born in Canada--Trump and his supporters must hate Canadians, too.)

College students traditionally align themselves with the Democratic Party because most have at least a vague sense of their own vulnerabilities--most know that their college degree doesn't give them the skills to be in high demand for good paying jobs, so they gravitate to the party that brands itself the friend of the downtrodden. I completely understand.

But this generation is different--sure, there are exceptions, but for too many, it's not enough to wear buttons and go to the polls, then bemoan the outcome of the election. No, no. This is the generation of entitlement--coddled from birth in households where seldom was heard a discouraging word. When the evil Donald Trump was elected, they did what they've been programmed to do--they had a collective meltdown and threw the biggest temper tantrum of the 21st Century.

This is the result of "safe spaces," of inventing microaggressions to punish traditional masculinity, of suspending fraternities when a few of their members have the audacity to dress up like Mexicans and Indians on Halloween, of criminalizing the game of tag, of being driven around all weekend to participate in sports where they don't keep score and everybody gets a trophy for showing up. This is the result of a culture where hard work is eschewed and "increasingly sophisticated video games are luring young men away from the workforce."

Most reprehensible of all are the young college males who have taken to the streets. A lot of concerned adults have have gone to bat for these fools over the past several years as the Democratic Party has manifested greater and greater hostility to their rights. If you don't know what I'm talking about, educate yourself--see e.g., here. Do these young men even know this is going on? Of course not. They're too busy practicing their groupthink to notice.

Last Friday, conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh lamented: "It's a shame what liberalism has done to Millennial-aged men, way too many of them. They've demasculated them. They have neutered them in just incredible ways. That's the only way to describe this. . . . to listen to them talk, they have become full-fledged, walking robots of the indoctrination that they've had." Harsh, but at least close to the truth.

For the few readers pissed off by what I've written--yes, yes, I know there are other important issues aside from due process on campus--and, yes, I'm concerned about some of Trump's stances. For example, on the single issue most important to Trump, trade, Trump is closer to Bernie Sanders than Obama or the Ted Cruz wing of the Republican Party. (Are you aware that Obama gave up trying to get TPP passed in the wake of Trump's election?) In case you can't remember as far back as August, Bernie was the candidate of choice of young men on campus.

The generation of entitlement is transforming us into the culture of entitlement. The corrupt media is happy to lend a hand. The reaction to Donald Trump's election on college campuses across America is worse than over-the-top, it's worse than childish, its worse than uninformed. It's a sign of a culture in free-fall.

Friday, November 4, 2016

Hillary Clinton once defended an accused rapist when she was a public defender. Clinton eventually had him plead to a lesser offense. See here.

Throughout this campaign, pro-Trump supporters have been saying that the accused was, in fact, a rapist, that Clinton knew he was a rapist, and that Clinton laughed about the "rapist's" twelve-year-old alleged victim.

Clinton is being unfairly maligned in this instance.

First, the suggestion that a criminal defendant is not worthy of a defense just because he was accused of rape is repulsive. Sometimes--more often than most people would like to think--men and boys accused of rape are innocent. If you need examples, spend a few weeks rummaging through this blog. You can start here and here.

Second, Clinton later gave an interview where she said: "Of course he claimed he didn’t. All this stuff. He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs. [laughs]" See here: http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/clintons-1975-rape-case/

Clinton wasn't laughing at the alleged victim. Nor was she suggesting that the man was not entitled to a defense. Her attitude was similar to one I've encountered many times from certain members of the bar: when some attorneys recount the cases they've handled, you'd think they were Clarence Darrow--invariably, the attorney was brilliant and clever, and if the outcome was at all favorable, it was obtained against all odds and was far better than the client deserved. Generally, the more esteemed the trial attorney, the less braggadocio you will hear. But you will rarely hear this from any attorney, "Wow, did I foul up that case--I was really lucky to get the result I got."

Third, the man pled to a lesser offense, something that happens all too often even when the man happens to be innocent. See here. I have no idea if this particular defendant was innocent, but plea bargains are scarcely iron-clad barometers of the truth. It would be helpful if we stopped buying into this notion that the man had to be guilty just because he was charged.

We are stranded in a political culture where, when it comes to college men accused of rape, hostility to due process is the norm. No longer is this hostility limited to law-and-order types--the "progressives" on the left have taken this hostility to new, chilling, levels. We fear that if the Democrats are elected next Tuesday, the Obama administration's hostility will continue. It is unfortunate that some on the right feel the need to score points any way they can--even by suggesting it was somehow wrong to defend a man accused of rape and by assuming that the accused had to be guilty merely because he was accused.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

It was discovered in March 2015 that during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email server for official communications, thus comprising United States security. To insure that no one could see what she was up to, Clinton deleted thousands of emails with a software program called “BleachBit," and an aide to Bill Clinton used physical force to destroy two of Hillary Clinton's phones.

The Justice Department investigated. Last summer the Attorney General recused herself from the email investigation because it was learned she met privately with former President Bill Clinton on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport--a meeting that many believe was intended to escape public notice. Lynch handed off the decision about whether to prosecute to James Comey, the Director of the FBI and an Obama appointee. Comey concluded that Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her handling of classified information, but the FBI's investigation previously was closed with a recommendation that Clinton not be prosecuted.

Last week, the FBI investigation was reopened after FBI agents discovered hundreds of thousands of new emails on the laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's top aide. Abedin allegedly claimed she had no idea how the emails got there.

Is the FBI's investigation legitimate? Of course not. It's sexism, pure and simple. Time Magazine has published an op-ed by Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, in which she writes:

I am mad. I am mad because I am scared. And if you are a woman, you should be, too. Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us.

The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female. Can you imagine this happening to a man? Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere. There is so much of that going around.

Lakoff adds: "It’s not about emails; it’s about public communication by a woman in general."

Lakoff's loony viewpoint needs no refutation--it is self-evidently stupid. But make no mistake, that viewpoint isn't an outlier, it's an official talking point.

This week, President Obama was asked by Samantha Bee to predict how Hillary Clinton will be unfairly criticized, the way he was unfairly criticized, after she's elected: “When Hillary is president,” Bee asked, “what do you think will be the female equivalent of ‘you weren’t born in this country’?”
Obama responded: “I think the equivalent will be: ‘She’s tired. She’s moody. She’s being emotional.” He added, “When men are ambitious, it’s just taken for granted. ‘Well, of course, they should be ambitious.’ When women are ambitious, ‘Why?’ That theme, I think, will continue throughout her presidency, and it’s contributed to this notion that somehow she is hiding something.”

When legitimate criticism is dismissed as sexism, America isn't ready for a female president. We can't have a commander-in-chief who is immune from criticism solely because of her genitalia. We've made this point previously. See here: http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2016/08/is-america-ready-for-woman-president.html

It's time for America to grow up and to call viewpoints like Robin Lakoff's for what they are: bullshit.

Kelly had the audacity to express concern that college men accused of sexual assault have been stripped of their due process rights.

That's it, you're saying?

Yep. Kelly is being treated as a misogynist because she wants fair proceedings that give the accused the right to know the charges in advance and a fair opportunity to be heard and to defend against them.

You're surprised that an organization like Media Matters hates fairness? Then you don't know that to the far left, anyone who dares to speak up for due process in college sex proceedings is a rape apologist.

Kelly also had the gall to criticize the Obama administration's insistence that the accused prove an element of the sexual assault, consent--thus unconstitutionally flipping the time-honored burden of proof to prove wrongdoing. Flipping the burden of proof in rape cases has long been a dream of radical feminists.
Further supposed evidence of Kelly's rape apologism is her criticism of reporters who treat the Rolling Stone false gang rape story as "noble" and who refuse to approach college rape cases with "an open mind" because "in some instances," young men are falsely accused.

Because, you see, treating allegations with an open mind is evidence that you hate women. We've posted many stories here to prove it.

And that's where we've come. Anyone who dares to call for keeping an open mind or who voices concern for fair processes so that the truth may be aired must hate women. Masculinity is a pathology.

The cultural elites who dominate our public discourse on sexual assault are so out-of-step with the vast Middle America, they have no clue how loony, how anti-intellectual, or how hateful they really are.

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner's defense of his magazine's decision to believe a rape accuser--and run with the infamous story about an alleged brutal gang rape at a UVA fraternity--was downright chilling:

Wenner admitted the magazine’s biggest mistake was not reaching out to Jackie’s alleged rapists.

“We did want to respect her wishes as the victim of a horrible rape . . . looking back with 20/20 hindsight, we should have demanded the identity of her [attackers],” he said.

Even so, Wenner suggested the error was unavoidable.
“We were the victim of one of these rare, once-in-a-lifetime things that nobody in journalism can protect themselves from,” he insisted.

Read it again: Wenner absolves his magazine of blame because poor little innocent Rolling Stone followed a practice that "nobody in journalism" could "protect themselves from"--it believed the accuser. Wenner even referred to the accuser--better known as "Jackie"--as "the victim of a horrible rape." Wenner made sure to add: “We are deeply committed to factual accuracy.” And: “We did everything reasonable, appropriate, up to the highest standards.” (Source)
It was poor little, defenseless Rolling Stone--with its circulation of of a million-and-a-half readers--that was the victim here, not the the young men of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, who were unjustly demonized as overseers of a rape pit, or the university official who was made out to be a rape enabler.

Of course, Wenner's defense of the magazine's decision to run with the story contradicts the conclusion of Columbia University's School of Journalism, which Wenner brought in to investigate the magazine's failures--that investigation concluded that it was "journalistic failure that was avoidable." (Source)

But why are we surprised when the publisher of a major magazine testifies under oath that it was "reasonable" and in accordance with "the highest standards" of journalism to believe the accuser without bothering to concede even the possibility that there might be another side to the story? In fact, Wenner's logic is the product of a culture that has allowed gender extremists on campus and in the media to dominate the public discourse on sexual assault. The purveyors of this culture unflinchingly demonize college men and reduce them to vile caricature, insist that college campuses are rape pits, claim with a straight face that women don't lie about rape, and preach that due process for men accused of rape on campus is a luxury college women can't afford. In short, they buy into something that even RAINN, the preeminent anti-rape organization in America, denounced: the "rape culture" meme.

The real lessons from the Rolling Stone disaster are that it is never right to rush to judgment and treat an accusation as tantamount to a conviction even where the accuser "seems" credible--and that it is both journalistic malpractice and morally grotesque to refuse to concede even the possibility that there might be another side to the story. It underscores the critical need for due process in "he said, she said" scenarios involving sex claims -- something feminists are happy to dispense with on college campuses. And, it affirms what Prof. Alan Dershowitz once wrote about rape accusations: ". . . don’t assume anything until all the evidence is in. The story is almost never what it appears to be on first impression."
The "rape culture" lie needs to stop, and the extremists need to be exposed for what they are.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

In this news story, a woman had a "sexual connection with a minor"--specifically, a 14-year-old boy--the news report says the sex was "consensual" though it is far from certain how a child can adequately "consent" to sex with an adult, even if he is a boy. Nevertheless, the woman claimed the boy "forced himself" on her.

So now, this child has been twice-victimized--by the same woman: he was statutorily raped, and he's the victim of a false rape claim.

Do you think the news reports would call such an encounter "consensual" if the genders were flipped?

Friday, October 14, 2016

Did you know that Donald Trump "stalked" Hillary Clinton during that debate?

No? Neither did 66.5 million eyewitnesses.

But, hey, I guess if a woman said it, it has to be true--eyewitnesses be damned.

All kidding aside, the fact that this allegation was lodged by Mrs. Clinton--even though a massive audience knows it wasn't true--and the fact that the allegation wasn't refuted by the mainstream media tells us everything we need to know this campaign.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Donald Trump held a press conference before last Sunday night's debate with Bill Clinton's sexual assault accusers. Then he had the accusers sit in the audience and watch the debate--the same audience where Bill Clinton sat. It was an unprecedented political spectacle. Fox News Trump supporter Sean Hannity and others on Fox News have treated each of Bill Clinton's accusers as sexual assault victims.

The goal of many allied with Trump is to claim that Hillary Clinton hates women as shown by her actions in attacking her husband's accusers. We previously decried this tactic, noting that "the attacks on Mrs. Clinton for defending her husband echo the shrill siren of radical feminism" which assumes guilt on the basis of an accusation. While it is certainly fair to point out Mrs. Clinton's hypocrisy when she urges that women who cry rape "should be believed" while her husband's accusers should not, it is absurd to suggest that it's proper to assume rape on the basis of an accusation.

I didn't have to wonder long. The accusers have come out of the woodwork and, mirabile dictu!--they somehow found their way to the New York Times, less than four weeks before the election. The one accusation concerns an alleged event that occurred more than 30 years ago. That's right--30 years ago. Chances are, Trump can't possibly prove he was somewhere other than where the woman claims he was because any evidence that could support an alibi is obviously long gone by now.

Trump claims his locker room bragging was all talk--that he did not sexually assault anyone. For the same reason that we should not assume Bill Clinton committed sexual assault based on accusations, we should not assume Donald Trump did so, either. Nor should we assume the accusers are liars. We should not take sides unless the claims have been subjected to a fair hearing.

Unfortunately, that's not how a lot of people will look at it.

The mainstream media--which has no use for Trump--will report these accusations 24/7 if possible in an effort to put the final nail in the coffin of the Trump campaign.

Trump supporters will take a different approach--and the real question is: how will Fox News treat these accusations against Trump? Will Sean Hannity et al. give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt--something they steadfastly refuse to do for Bill Clinton? Will they try to smear the accusers even after they treated Bill Clinton's accusers as if they were Mother Theresa's sisters? Or will they do the right thing and report the facts about these accusations without taking sides as to their veracity? And if Fox News does the right thing in this instance, will that expose its hypocrisy because Fox News has failed to do the same in Bill Clinton's case?

My guess: Trump supporters will try to make the case that the accusations against Bill Clinton are credible while the ones against Trump aren't. And my guess is that most objective people will see through that.

That's what happens when you use sexual assault accusations to further a political agenda. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

No one should complain about the outcome of this election, whatever it might be. Americans don’t deserve a good president because they don’t demand one.

Mrs. Clinton and her news media allies (pretty much the entire mainstream media) are only interested in talking about Donald Trump’s idiocy du jour. For his part, Donald Trump is primarily interested in attacking leaders of his own party who aren’t supporting him. The rest of the GOP and its media outlet, Fox News, are more interested in catching Clinton in lies about old emails or maybe even hoping she faints again.

The American people are even worse. We just witnessed the most dramatic presidential debate in history--and the most talked-about thing is what? A guy in a red sweater who asked a question that wasn’t important.

So what's so important that we should be discussing, you ask?

For one thing, Americans ought to be talking about Obamacare. Barack Obama considers it his signature accomplishment, and Mrs. Clinton is running as an Obama acolyte. Obama sold it to Americans with his Pajama Boy ad campaign and promises that it would “reduce the costs of most Americans” and that “no matter what you’ve heard, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor . . . .” In fact, Obama made those claims repeatedly.

The Pajama Boy campaign turned out to be a dud—akin to trying to peddle New Coke (younger readers may not know--in the mid-1980s, Coke changed the formula of its iconic drink--it didn’t last). And the promises turned out to be wrong, to put it charitably. An architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, later admitted in a moment of arrogant candor that the promises were deceitful—because “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” in this instance. Health care premiums have skyrocketed to the point that Bill Clinton—the man Mrs. Clinton said would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy” in her administration--last week said this: "So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world."

At this week’s debate, a questioner asked: “Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, it is not affordable. Premiums have gone up. Deductibles have gone up. Copays have gone up. Prescriptions have gone up. And the coverage has gone down. What will you do to bring the cost down and make coverage better?” Even Mrs. Clinton agreed with the questioner. “. . . I agree with you. Premiums have gotten too high. Copays, deductibles, prescription drug costs . . . .” And: “. . . we've got to get costs down. We've got to provide additional help to small businesses so that they can afford to provide health insurance.”

The most important accomplishment of the Obama administration is a mess, and you'd think this would be the principal issue in this campaign. So why aren’t we holding both candidates’ feet to the fire and insisting that they lay out detailed plans about how they’re going to fix Obamacare, or replace it?